Posted on 07/16/2010 9:23:12 AM PDT by combat_boots
WASHINGTON - A 3.6 magnitude earthquake woke the Washington metro region Friday, rattling homes and startling people.
The U.S. Geological Survey says it happened at exactly 5:04:49 a.m. about 3 miles under the earth's surface.
Right after it happened calls from all around Maryland, Northern Virginia and as far away as West Virginia started lighting up the WTOP newsroom phone lines.
"It was centered in the Germantown-Gaithersburg area," Randy Baldwin, a physicist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Earthquake Information Center, tells WTOP.
The earthquake woke WTOP listener Christy in her four-bedroom home in Bethesda.
"I was terrified. Then it was a huge jolt and my bed actually went forward from the wall," Christy told WTOP.
The USGS received 6,500 reports about this quake. While minor, this quake was out of the norm for the region.
Baldwin say the area's last earthquake was 2.0 in 2008. The region also had a 2.7 quake in 1993.
(Excerpt) Read more at wtop.com ...
Well, it could have been a digestive issue, lol. But it was probably the quake.
At the very end, there was a loud ‘boom’! Our two story house is on a slab- no basement. Hubby thinks it was the whole house ‘dropping’ back down!!!
If you are in the path of a small 1, you know. I got the benefit of 1 rumbling right along the front wall of my parents’ house (I happened to be leaning against it at the time). Earlier, my neighbors had come over after the 1st of this rash of quakes, asking if we noticed anything weird, and we said “no”, because we’d neither heard nor felt anything, while he had just 200 yds away. Small quakes like this seem to need to be “right under” you to notice.
Interesting point about the water.
Locally, two water mains broke during the week before the quake. Maybe the ground was swelling a bit- like one’s tummy after eating a burrito?
Did all the liberals in Monkey Canny fall into a chasm? If not, what a waste.
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